Sonic Adventure 3: Sonic's Story
by 14broadlands
Summary: The Blue Bur embarks on his latest adventure - but for once, it is not to stop an enemy, rather a returning friend. Blaze the cat arrives in Mobius and she brings with her a newfound fascination with the chaos emeralds. And with the world still recovering from the Dark Gaia incident from a year ago, the idea of the seven emeralds coming together again is not a welcome one.
1. Prologue I

**Sonic Adventure 3 is a story spanning the perspectives of numerous characters in SEGA's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise simultaneously. Due to this, not all perspectives can be covered at once without complicating the narrative. Thus _Sonic's Story_ \- consisting on the perspectives of all characters whose role in the story revolves around or has a direct relation to that of Sonic -is to be told in this first story while the rest of the characters' perspectives and separated tales and adventures will occur in their own distinct and separate stories to be released at a later stage near the end of Sonic's Story - or at least whenever they become relevant. There will be separate stories revolving around Sonic, Shadow, and Knuckles before the series is brought together into once coherent fourth act and a final fifth - but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves before we've even read chapter one of story one.**

 **The games in the Sonic franchise that will be treated as canon for the following work of fan novel include _Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic CD, Sonic 3 &K, Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Rush, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06, the Sonic Riders series, Sonic Unleashed, and Sonic Generations._ I hope you find this to be an interesting take on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and a worthy continuation to the Sonic Adventure series. **

* * *

Miles and Sonic had known each other for six years, and for all that time Sonic had always been on the move. He was never a stagnant character, finding a nice place to camp and remain for longer than a few months. There was always a destination, a horizon to be crossed, an undiscovered part of the world to make discovered, and thus there was always a reason to keep moving. Miles used to be able to keep up with Sonic but ever since the fox matured, his legs and torso had been more proportional than his companion, whose long thin legs allowed him to fly forward like no one else he'd seen. Miles just could not keep up anymore, even with the help of his two tails spinning and propelling him forward. And so for the most of their friendship, it became a routine of chasing his blue friend and often being left behind.

But the nomadic lifestyle of the pair had seemingly fizzled to an end over the recent months. Their fifth year together had been well packed with adventures from the time the Black Arms invaded to the time Robotnik split the world into eight separate floating continents. Their most recent adventure was a very brief time travelling experience – or at least they think they time travelled – but even before then, they had moved into what they now thought might be a possibly permanent home. The pair had finally found a location that had seemed well-suited to them.

Christmas Island was always a temporary place for Sonic. Station Square grew tedious once he became too fast for the gridded streets. The open canyons were suitable for the occasional exercise but boring in scenery. The beaches had the fault of being right on the ocean. And for whatever reasons, Sonic had refused to return to Soleanna. Yet they had now found a rather decent spot in the world for them. On the same continent as the United Federation but out in the no-man's-land, the pair found residence in an open country side stretching countless leagues in length and width. Rolling hills and flowing rivers filled the eye, a landscape dotted with trees featuring the occasional forest, not a single road in sight. One might be justified in thinking that no Overlanders had even set foot on this unclaimed soil. Upon finding this nearly perfect spot, our Miles Prower began about his work. All he had to do was find the biggest tree that he could – which happened to be a mammoth thing sitting a few hundred feet from a great forest – and soon his construction of their treehouse home would be complete.

It was the perfect place to satisfy both of their needs; including Sonic's need for wide unobstructed space to stretch his legs and Miles's need for a stagnant home he could call his own. The area had reminded the two of the Green Hills in South Island, the area where Sonic had first begun his independent career as an adventurer. And though the hills themselves were not quite as dynamic as Sonic's first favourite zone – and the soil lacked the light and dark orange checkerboard style design that no one really knew from whence it originated – there was still enough room for the hedgehog to run at maximum speed for nearly an hour without bumping into any establishments. It was here where they made residence and after several months of building, Tails had his tree fortress constructed in all its awesome magnitude.

Reader, I say tree fortress because it was more than just a house. The entirety of it consisted of six main buildings of homelike size. They even had a garage with both Sonic and Miles's planes (and Sonic's car, something he never used) along with a runway. All of this was built onto a massive tree; not for any practical reasons but simply because Sonic had one day said it would be a cool idea. And so Miles complied as a sidekick would. It was here where they returned after adventures and spent most of their days. And on a day such as this, when Sonic and Miles were both between adventures, they passed their time in quite exciting ways.

It was a Sunday morning in The Valley and wind carried strong in a western direction. Thus Sonic knew which direction he would be running. "Alright, all the speedometers and cameras are GO," Miles spoke into his mic while typing instructions into his keyboard. "The coms are up – hopefully. Can you hear me loud and clear?"

"Loud and clear," Sonic affirmed while doing his pre-workout stretches a few hundred yards away. "I'm liking this wind, Tails."

"Thanks, designed it myself," the fox joked. "Should I walk you through the course again or do you remember all the corners."

"Most of the corners and from what I remember of them, it seems you're trying to get me to mess up."

"Speed has never been a problem with you," Miles explained. "Sharp turns on the other hand have always been your Achilles' heel. That's where you need the most practice. Once you've mastered sudden 90 degree turns, you might finally be able to run through a city again without destroying any property."

"Yeah, yeah, no need to remind me," the hedgehog got off to a jogging start, a jog for him already exceeded the full sprint speed of most humans.

"You ready?"

"Always."

"Let's try keeping it subsonic for now."

"Sure thing," and soon, Sonic was rocketing off along the course. He had reached and began surpassing 400kph, blazing across the hills. The course was primarily a set of marked trees with speedometers attached, trees he would have to corner at different angles. His first few were easy enough, simple 35 to 45 degree turns; the type of stuff he did naturally. He was performing well. But this was just the warm up.

"Okay now push to just below transonic speeds," Miles instructed as he monitored his tablet. Sonic's numbers began increasing and soon he was at 900kph. "Here's a 60 degree turn coming up. Brace yourself." It was actually about 800 meters ahead but at Sonic's current speed, he would be meeting it in just shy of three seconds. This was a slim tall standing tree, carefully chosen as one Sonic would not risk slamming into as he tended to in most workout routines. The three seconds passed and the hedgehog managed the turn just fine, darting sharply to his left without breaking much speed. "Good," Miles announced, "great in fact. Now your first 90 degree turn to your right. It's impossible to do this one without slowing down a bit so here's my challenge. Push yourself to 980kph and make the turn without falling below 900. You got that?"

"Jeez Tails," said Sonic as he spotted his next tree. "You want me to tie my hands behind my back too?"

"It's not too difficult for you, is it?"

"We'll see," and in the span of a few short seconds, the hedgehog moved from a kilometre away from his target to right in front of it. From his distance he allowed himself a brief hop from about 300 meters away and upon landing had turned his body 90 degrees to the right, charged a spin-dash as he slid just past the tree – at 902kph – and released at the millisecond, shooting off straight ahead. It was a perfect 90 degree turn. His sidekick was quite impressed.

"Wow! That was your cleanest one yet!" Miles excitedly announced over the coms. "But are you ready for the real challenge?"

"Heck yeah, I'm feeling good about this one!" Sonic said as he sprinted into a lake. His speed allowed him to quickly dart across the water, taking his steps at a speed much faster than what it would take for the water to sink him. In a few seconds, he was back from water to land on route to his next checkpoint.

"Alright, here's your next task. I want you to do another 90 degree turn. You've now entered transonic speeds so I want you to do it at Mach One."

Oh how Sonic loved the sound of that. The words 'Mach One' sent chills down his spine, goose bumps down his arms, and excited him more than the smell of a freshly made chilli dog. Nothing excited Sonic more than breaking the sound barrier. "That's what I like to hear," the hedgehog sang confidently.

He had entered the state of mesmerised movement, where his feet began their countless steps per-second subconsciously, and all he had to focus on was forward. He felt his left foot clap against the soil, the countless yards of lands fly beneath him between each lunge, followed by the clapping of his right foot, and countless more yards flying by. He felt the wind hitting his round torso, bend around him, and shoot off his back quills and tail, and his two arms that shot straight behind in the most aerodynamic manner. He felt the wind hitting his rounded face, curving around and shooting off from under the six long and straight quills on his head. His body was truly built for speed.

Soon the sounds of each step began to mute, masked by the howling of wind. The sound of his own breathing had stopped for him, masked by the howling of wind. The sounds of all the nature around had vanished, masked by the howling of wind. The sound increased in pitch, higher and higher as a conical cloud of vapour appeared from the hedgehog's quills. Higher and higher the sound went, Sonic at the apex of his anticipation with all the wind in the world seeming to attack his face and body. The air began tearing around him, the cloud behind him rippled, the sound increased higher and higher until nearly deafening and then… in a sudden burst of thunder and speed, the hedgehog took off in a sonic boom, shattering their cloud behind him and the air around him. And if Sonic was not like a rocket before, the sound of him blasting off certainly made him mistakable for one.

"HECK YEAH!" the hedgehog shouted as he ran, unable to even hear himself as the sound had already fallen miles behind him. But as much as Sonic loved running at this speed, there was a reason why he didn't do it more often. Keeping track of exactly where he was and what was ahead of him was quite the mission. Miles would have to narrate for him.

"You're coming by the turn in about eight seconds," he said. "Seven. Six." As the fox counted down, Sonic prepared himself for the turn. He had never done it successfully before. He always found any form of turning that wasn't gradual while at the speed of sound to be too difficult to do but he was on a role today. He had already broken a previous record on his first try. He would not mess this one up. "Five. Four." But before Sonic could ready his spin-dash, something came into his peripheral vision, something bright and obtrusive yet still small enough for someone to have possibly missed. It wasn't safe for Sonic to turn his head from the path ahead of him but he did and what he saw caught him off guard. "Three. Two… Sonic?" The hedgehog stared off into the sky as he flew past his marker, not paying any mind to the turn he was about to attempt and zooming off further into the meadow.

"Tails," he finally said, "do you see that?"

"No, but it must be important if you missed your mark like that. You're even slowing down," the fox observed as he monitored his screen. He had now fallen far below the speed of sound once again to his more gradual pace. When Miles finally looked up from the screen, he froze as he saw what he believe had caught Sonic's sights. "Sonic, I think that might be a comet!"

"Not sure what else a falling ball of fire in the sky could be," the hedgehog said. "Should we be concerned? Try to escape the impact radius?"

Miles watched the comet carefully. For something tumbling through Mobius's atmosphere, it was particularly smaller and slower than what he imagined typical comets would appear like. _Perhaps a fallen satellite,_ he thought, _or a descending UFO._

"Tails, this thing is getting pretty close to the ground now. Should I maybe turn back to fetch you so we can get outta here?"

"There's something in there," Miles decided. "That's not a comet. It's slowing down faster than the drag of the atmosphere would make it. I think it might be an aircraft of some sort… maybe a spacecraft, actually."

"Well if you're right," Sonic said, "then what are the chances that someone's in that thing that's about to crash in the forest?"

"Chances are slim. But even if they were high, the chances of them surviving the crash would be even slimmer. I don't think you can reach the forest before the impact," the fox said before his eyes widened. Why did he have to say that? It wasn't like even if Sonic did, he would be able to catch the thing out the sky. So why did he have to say that? But before Miles could say anything else, Sonic responded.

"Is that a challenge?"

"No, it most definitely is not."

"If I reach Mach One again, I might be able to..."

"It's a falling from orbit, Sonic. You'll get yourself killed."

"I haven't before."

"It only has to happen once."

"Not gonna happen this time."

"Sonic."

"I've survived worse."

"SONIC!" but before Tails could convince the hedgehog against it, the sound of another sonic boom could be heard over the coms as a blue blur disappeared into the forest ahead, all the while the falling object came ever closer to the ground.

* * *

 **Sonic's Story will receive two updates per week with a week's break between each 'mini-arc'.**


	2. Prologue II

**This second chapter of _Sonic Adventure 3: Sonic's Story_ was posted on the 23rd of June, 2018, the 27th anniversary of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. _Bon Anniversaire_ to the Blue Blur (who I must confirm is 16 in this story). Now, on to chapter two.**

* * *

 _Tails was right,_ Sonic thought when the sound of the crash hit him as he approached. He slowed down as best he could, grinding his heals into the soil until his speed halved and then quartered. The comet, or whatever it was, had hit the ground. It was not nearly as apocalyptic as the hedgehog had expected. It wasn't apocalyptic at all. When Sonic did find the crater, it had only the radius of a few dozen metres. It had completely obliterated a few trees however, causing Sonic to concern himself mildly with whatever birds or squirrels might have been in the area. But it was nothing he would concern himself with for too long once he saw what lay in the centre of the smouldering crater.

Burning hot and half molten metallic debris was scattered in an explosive pattern, in the centre of which there lay a familiar figure. She must have been completely concealed in the falling vessel for her body to still be intact, including her fine clothes; white tights under a violet coat with a dark pink hemline. She had a small red bindi on her forehead, similar to that of the women from Shamar, but she was not a Shamari… she was not even human. She was a cat, a cat with lavender fur. But she was not a Mobian either. She wasn't supposed to exist on Mobius as far as Sonic was concerned. It didn't take too long before Miles Prower, commonly known as Tails, had arrived, jumping from the Tornado 2's pilot seat and landing in the crater to find Sonic holding her unconscious body in his arms.

"Wow," Tails said upon laying eyes on the cat. "I didn't expect to see a Mobian in that craft… I didn't expect to see anything still alive in the craft, actually."

"She's not a Mobian," Sonic said. "Her name is Blaze the Cat and I don't think she's not from this dimension."

They had flown back on the Tornado 2, Tails piloting, Blaze in the back seat, and Sonic clutching onto the wing as he was fond of doing. It was obvious to Tails that Sonic had met her before by how he reacted to her and by how he knew her name and origin. Although, admittedly, there was not much of the cat's origin that Sonic knew for sure.

"She's a princess in her world, I think," Sonic said when they arrived back at their place. "A princess or some sort of protector or guardian, maybe both." They spoke of this as Sonic carried her from the garage with all the planes and cars up the winding stairs that wrapped around the trunk of their treehouse home and onto the main deck that led into their lounge. "Do you remember anything about the sol emeralds?"

"Never heard of them," Tails admitted. "You may have met her but I don't think I have."

"You have," Sonic confirmed, "twice actually. Cream met her too but I don't think she'll remember her either."

"How did we meet her the first time?"

"We were gathering the sol emeralds for her."

"And the second time?"

"She and a silver hedgehog from the future were trying to kill me."

"Oh," said Tails, "was this the Soleanna Incident that only you remember?"

"Me," he said, "and Shadow and the princess Elise. Who knows, maybe she remembers something about it too."

There were very few things that Sonic and Tails would never talk about. The two had been travelling together for six years and for most of that time, there were no secrets between them. They would tell each other everything on most occasions but there were the a few topics here and there that one would never ask of the other. Sonic would never ask Tails about his life before they met each other. Supposedly it was one with a lot of bullying and suffering. Tails would never ask about what happened to Sonic's siblings, Manic and Sonia. Sonic would never ask Tails about his parents. And the biggest of all, and likely more often relevant, Tails would never ask Sonic of what happened in Soleanna. It was something Sonic rarely spoke of and when he did, it was always briefly and vaguely, never giving anything away too obviously. All Tails knew of the Soleanna Incident was that time travel was somehow involved, Shadow was somehow involved, the princess Elise had been somehow involved, and now he knew that Blaze the Cat had been trying to kill Sonic.

Tails still respected the sensitivity of the issue enough not to pry further on it. "So, aside from her trying to kill you that one time, would you say that she's trustworthy?" Tails asked.

"She was when we first met her and she still was even while she tried to kill me. She had her reasons, thought I was someone else," Sonic explained. "Whatever world she is from, she seems like she'll do whatever she can to save it."

"Think that might be why she's here? To try save her world?"

"I'd hope she'd just wanted to pay us a friendly visit. But how often does that ever happen, am I right?" Sonic shrugged and sat atop a souvenir ring box that acted as decoration in the lounge. "Now we just have to wait until she wakes up. Hopefully, she'll be able to explain everything herself."

"No time to just sit here waiting," Tails corrected. "She did crash land in some spacecraft not ten minutes ago. I'll check her vitals, make sure she's okay and didn't suffer any brain damage. We don't want another amnesiac friend, now do we? You can make us lunch."

And make lunch is exactly what the hedgehog did. Not before long, he was making an early dinner too but all the while, the cat still slept. Tails had concluded that she didn't have any injuries or internal damages that they could worry about and that all they had to do and could do was wait until she woke to address them. They had finished their dinner and the sun was beginning to set behind the rolling hills. They didn't have curtains in the lounge and so they could see the setting sun on the horizon from whence they ate. Even after they were done with their chilli dogs – of course they had chilli dogs if Sonic was cooking – neither of them felt it would be right to leave Blaze alone on the couch so they stayed in the lounge wasting away their evening playing two player video games.

"I never liked Golden Axe," Tails admitted as they played. "I was always more of a Contra guy."

"Dude, are you kidding me? Contra is impossible. Even getting past the first stage is hard enough for me! How do you do it?"

"Konami Code, Sonic. It's the answer to our prayers."

"Oh, of course you're use cheat codes, Tails."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"If I play a game, I do it the way it was supposed to be played. I don't learn codes, don't go online for answers, don't do nothing but play the way the developers intended them to be played."

"Well if the guys who made Contra put in the cheat code, it means they expected people to find it difficult. Those thirty lives are useful and I don't see anything wrong with using elements that were already put into the game."

"I guess you have a point."

"Of course I do."

"Yeah but… isn't the Konami Code only available on the NES version?"

Tails fell silent as he felt Sonic's eyes glaring at him. But before either of them could make a comment on the fox's playing Nintendo consoles, another voice changed their tunes. "Where am I?" Sonic and Tails dropped their controllers, the game still on, and turned back to the couch to see the cat sitting upright, rubbing her forehead and looking about confused. She had yellow eyes, sharp and attentive as cats' eyes tended to be. "Who are you two?"

Sonic didn't respond. He was eyeing her strangely, as though there was something he was looking for in her mannerisms. "We're Sonic and Tails," Tails introduced, "and this is our tree house." He spoke with the care of a nurse addressing a patient. "Don't try to get up. You were in a bit of an accident when we found you, a crash of some sort."

"A crash," Blaze repeated, swinging her feet off the couch and facing the two. "When did this happen?"

"A few hours ago, around noon. We thought you were a comet for a second but turned out it was a pod or a spacecraft or some kind of UFO." Sonic had noticed Tails wasn't asking her any of the obvious questions. _Why are you here? How did you get in that pod? Do you remember anything of Soleanna?_ "You're probably feeling a bit weak right now. I suggest you get some rest. We'll fix you something to eat so you can get your energy back, okay?"

She nodded. Tails got up and pulled Sonic by the arm into the bar with him while Blaze, still with a confused expression about her, began tested her muscles, stretching out her arms as she sat there and clenching and unclenching her fists. "I don't think she remembers us," Sonic said, peering over his shoulder at the cat.

"We can't be too sure of that yet," said Tails as chopped up a bunch of fruits at the bar. "She just regained consciousness. She'll be a bit dazzled for a while, I think. You remember what happened with Shadow."

"Well, Shadow lost all of his memory so I wouldn't use that as a soothing comparison… you don't think she's lost her memory, do you? I am not willing to deal with that again."

"Relax, Sonic," Tails said, switching on the smoothie machine. "When she's fully rested tomorrow morning, we'll ask her how she got in that thing. Right now, we just need to get her comfortable. Imagine how you'd feel waking up in the house of some strange Mobians."

"Well I have had my share of wild nights, Tails."

"Okay, imagine waking up in some strange Mobians' house if you weren't partying the previous night."

"Who knows, she might've been at an interdimensional party last night," Sonic quipped. "Maybe we should have given her a breathalyser test when she woke up."

"Sonic, we're supposed to be E for Every… Blaze, where are you going?" Tails said, turning his attention from Sonic to the cat who was now on her way to the deck.

"I just need to…" she began but her voice trailed off as she stepped outside. She walked with the careful slowness of someone with sore limbs whose every step appeared painful, but she stepped on. Her eyes became fixed on the view ahead of her, the red sun bathing the sky in a warm hue, half eclipsed by the horizon. She stared at it a few seconds before finishing, "…get some air." Sonic and Tails walked out after her, Tails with the smoothie in hand. They used the moment to behold the sunset with her. Even though it was a sight they saw every day, now that they were with someone who had never seen it before, they viewed it with fresh eyes. And for a few seconds, everything was still and quiet and beautiful. "Blaze," she said. "That is my name, isn't it? Princess Blaze the Cat, guardian of the Sol Emeralds."

 _Her senses are coming back to her,_ Tails thought.

 _I knew she was both,_ Sonic thought.

"You know who I am but I don't recognise you," she said, finally turning away from the horizon. "Have we met before?"

Tails looked to Sonic. This was something the fox could not speak for certain on. "We have, once or twice," Sonic confirmed. "But I don't blame you if we don't come to mind often. We are from a different world from yours."

Mentioning the different worlds was what caused Blaze's eyes to widen and her eyes to sharpen even more. This was news to her. "A different world… what is the name of this planet, this world of yours?"

"Mobius," said Sonic.

The word caused a reaction in her. Blaze raised her hand back to her forehead and winced as though she was feeling pain once again. She recognised the name of their world. "Take this," Tails said, handing her the smoothie. "It should help with the headache that you probably have." Blaze looked as though she was slightly irritated, as though hearing that she was on Mobius was an inconvenience to her.

"Sonic and Tails," she said, "those were your names, yes?" The two nodded. "Now that I think of it, your names are familiar to me."

* * *

 **More to come next week.**


	3. Prologue III

The sun had now set and Sonic and Tails were taking Blaze on a tour through their humble abode – even if it was far from humble in every sense of the word. For a home that only accommodated two Mobians, it was quiet massive with each of the six different zones serving their own purposes. The garage had been made at the hollowed out base of the tree and had two planes and a car parked in it. The storeroom was also located on the base of the tree, a relatively large shack built on the side of it where Tails put all of the things he didn't know where else to put including failed projects of his. Higher up was the main salon where they would often find themselves relaxing at the end of the day, consisting of a dining area, lounge, kitchen, and bar. In the upper level of the hollowed out trunk was Tails's lab where he did most of his experiments. The last two zones were the living spaces, with four rooms and only one bathroom – a flaw in design – and finally, their trophy room.

While Sonic and Tails showed her around the aforementioned trophy room, they spoke a bit about what had been happening in their lives since they last saw each other. Sonic had been explaining the Soleanna Incident in more detail than he had ever done before, revealing to both Blaze and Tails that he, Shadow, and a hedgehog named Silver had used the seven chaos emeralds to defeat a creature known as Solaris. Sonic had searched her expression for when he mentioned that name, Silver, but she didn't seem to emote in the slightest at his mention. _Perhaps our time travelling messed with whatever world he comes from too,_ thought Sonic as he explained further.

"And this black hedgehog," Blaze said, pointing to a framed photo of Sonic and Shadow in front of the capital building in Central City, Sonic with a thumbs up and a massive smile while Shadow stood turned away from the camera with his arms crossed in his typical fashion, "this black hedgehog is the one you call Shadow?"

"Yeah, it took the two of us and Silver sharing the power of the chaos emeralds to defeat Solaris," Sonic explained. "Not something I'm typically used to. Only other times I shared the power of the emeralds was when we were sorting out the Biolizard situation on the Space Colony ARK and when I gave Tails and Knuckles a taste while we fought Neo Metal Sonic." As Sonic explained, he couldn't help but think that she didn't know or understand anything he was saying. Even if their time travelling hadn't been a factor in her memory loss, she was so removed from their world that they doubted she even knew who Metal Sonic was or what the Space Colony ARK was. She knew so little of their adventures.

"The power of your emeralds can be shared, is it?" Blaze asked, still sipping at her smoothie. "A curious thing to hear. I doubt the same is possible with the sol emeralds from my world."

"Well," Tails began, "if what Sonic claims is correct then your sol emeralds may just be interdimensional counterparts to our chaos emeralds, just with a different name. In that case, I can imagine your emeralds would behave the same way as ours would."

Blaze seemed unconvinced, shaking her head slightly at the fox's comment. "I doubt our worlds are that closely tied," she said, turning from the photo to an air-board mounted on a shelf like a trophy titled 'Blue Star', her back to Sonic and Tails. "Only because you suggest that we've crossed paths and worlds before, doesn't mean our worlds are so closely tied."

"That depends entirely on what you think the chaos emeralds are," Tails said.

"Here we go," sighed Sonic as he dropped himself onto a couch. "Tails, you don't have to explain your whole theory on the emeralds and their pow—"

"So according to my theory," Tails interrupted, "the chaos emeralds aren't just a couple of stones with some really high power levels. They're unlimited sources of energy. They've been used to power up a gigantic water creature, the eclipse cannon like three times, a laser that split apart the planet, and Sonic a couple of times yet they never run out of power. Even when Sonic can't maintain his chaos powered form for long, it's because of his own bodily limitations rather than those of the emeralds. And even when they appeared to have been drained when the world was split apart, turns out the energy had just been transferred to Gaia Temples rather than depleted. The energy in these emeralds is unlimitedBottom of Form and, if I am correct, it is a necessary constant in the universe."

"How so?" Blazed asked.

"Perhaps this is the same in your world but do you ever hear stories from different religions and mythologies starting with 'In the beginning, there was nothing' or 'In the beginning, there was only chaos'? Well according to my theory, this chaos was a shapeless and timeless mass of raw energy. They say before the big bang, time didn't exist, right? Well, if that is the case, whatever this 'nothingness' was, whatever this 'chaos' was had the elements necessary within it to not only kick-start the big bang but create and manipulate time and space. I don't know how it was triggered, but I believe that the universe expanded from that 'nothingness', from that 'chaos'. And then there was matter and time and gravity and space and laws of physics and all that constitutes our universe today, although in its most rudimentary form. Do you follow me so far? Good. Now, what I think is that the 'chaos' that made this universe still exists within it, not congealed into the matter that we are all made of but in a purer form. I think this 'chaos' is what we call chaos energy and I believe that it is within the chaos emeralds. That's why the laws of physics and chemistry bend to the emeralds. That's why time can be frozen and rewound. That's why we can use them to teleport and create massive energy output from little input, how we can power eclipse cannons and fancy machines, how we can do so much. The chaos emeralds are the remnants of the great power that once was before matter was a factor in the universe. Do you know what that means?"

"No one knows what it means, Tails," Sonic cut in, "not even you."

"Exactly!" Tails shouted excitedly. "No one knows! It's an entire field of study that calls into question all of science's laws, something no one has fully wrapped their minds around yet because the only people in the world who have studied these emeralds extensively enough are Gerald Robotnik and me."

Sonic noticed Blaze cringe at the sound of Robotnik's name and he wondered if it was the family name or that of the individual that made her react like so. She now had her full attention on the two of them – mostly Tails – and appeared to be just as fascinated in what the fox had said as he always wanted someone to be. "And you believe that if your chaos emeralds are a constant in your universe, they must be in mine as well?"

"Exactly!" Tails announced. "But then again, I don't know if whatever this chaos force is has the reach to influence multiple universes or if there is only one to which an amount of it can apply at once. If the latter then we're correct to assume that you sol emeralds and our chaos emeralds are the exact same thing, just in different dimensions and with different names."

Even Sonic, one who was rarely moved by scientific babble, found there to be a lot of interest in what Tails had just said. If the fox was right then in whatever dimension they travelled to, there would always be emeralds with the power and capability to break the laws of physics. "With emeralds of such power," Blaze began, "I'm sure your world must have a guardian of the emeralds as well, mustn't it? Who is responsible for protecting the emeralds?"

"We don't have one guardian for the emeralds," Sonic explained. "They're kind of all over the place."

"Well do you know where they are?"

Sonic and Tails looked to each other. Though they may have enjoyed speaking of the adventures they had with and their theories regarding the emeralds, speaking of their whereabouts and who watches over them was always an uncomfortable topic. They often preferred to ignore such things like exactly where they were and just know that they were safe wherever as long as they were separated. But Sonic knew that he needed to try to stimulate her memory, see if she could remember him or the emeralds or at least why she was on their world.

"We have one," Sonic explained. "Tails keeps it in his lab to run experiments on. If it weren't for it, he wouldn't have had that lovely dissertation he just worded out to you."

"There's another one in the University of Spagonia," Tails added. "Only the greatest minds in the world get to work with it. They mostly try to see if one can be exploited to provide unlimited sustainable energy."

"Another one is in the hands of GUN," added Sonic, "Guardian Units of Nations. They're probably the most qualified to keep the emeralds safe, even if they might not be the most trustworthy with exactly what they do with them."

"The fourth is with a friend of ours," said Tails. "Shadow the hedgehog. We don't see much of him but we trust that he can keep it safe."

"And the fifth is in the hands of non-other than Doctor Eggman," Sonic sneered. "Obviously we'd rather it be in someone else's hands but there's not much he can do with just one so no one's really gone out looking for it just yet."

Blaze nodded, waiting for them to continue. The two had stopped. There was a momentary silence before she eventually asked, "And the other two? I'm pretty sure that there are seven of your chaos emeralds. Where are the last two?"

"We don't know," Tails shrugged.

Clearly Blaze found this more alarming than her two hosts as her eyes widened and her jaw lay slightly agape. Was there something she wasn't getting? "If the chaos emeralds are as important and powerful as you've just said they are, Tails, wouldn't it be best if you two always knew where each one was?"

"To be honest," Sonic began, "I'm kind of glad no one knows where the other two are. If we're lucky, they'd be sitting on a shelf in a gem store next to other equally massive yet practically useless gems so no one knows they're important. Better yet, they'd be at the bottom of the ocean or somewhere no one'll be going any time soon. The emeralds are better off when they're as far away from each other as possible and best way to keep it that way is if no one knows where they are."

"But you were just talking about all the times the emeralds were used to save the world. Don't you think it would be best if you just held onto them and waited until the next time Eggman or anyone tried to do something sinister?" Blaze questioned.

"When I used the chaos emeralds to defeat Perfect Chaos," Sonic said, pointing to a framed photo of himself in station square, "it was only after the chaos emeralds had been used to make Chaos as powerful as he was in the first place." Blaze hadn't recognised it as him until she focused on the bodily similarities in comparison to the colours and the shape of the hair. He appeared to be a completely different person with glowing bright and golden fur, his quills turning upwards, and his once green eyes a harsh hue of red. It was framed with the name 'Super Sonic in Station Square' on it. "When I used the chaos emeralds to defeat Biolizard on the ARK," he added, pointing to artificial chaos 0 helm, "it was only after Shadow and Eggman used the emeralds to blow up half the moon." He moved his finger to point to a newspaper with a front cover featuring what looked like Sonic running away carrying a small chao and a frog. Blaze wondered what the significance behind that was. "When we used the emeralds to defeat Metal Sonic, it was only after he had combined and copied the chaos energy's data to become Neo Metal Sonic. When Shadow used the emeralds to save the earth from the Black Arms, it was only after they had used the eclipse cannon to destroy Central City and teleport the Black Comet onto the earth. I won't get into what happened in Soleanna," Sonic said, "but do you want to know what really made the whole world decide that these emeralds shouldn't be kept near each other?"

Sonic moved his finger and pointed to a small green bauble necklace, to whom it belonged, Blaze was not sure, under a framed photo of the globe. The globe was fragmented, as though it was a shattered sphere with each piece suspended in the air apart from each other while still close enough to make a somewhat spherical shape. The centre of the world, the molten core, was visible from the view from space. Blaze had seen the photo when they had walked in but she had thought it to be an artistic work. Now that she was seeing Sonic point directly at it, she had to acknowledge it for what it was. "What happened there?" she asked.

"I saved the world, again," Sonic explained. "Used all seven emeralds to transform and defeat Dark Gaia once and for all, putting all of the world's continents back together and bringing about a brief period of peace. But it was all after Eggman used the emeralds to break the world apart in the first place. That time, the rest of the world had to get involved. It wasn't like when Eggman took the time to gather all the emeralds to power the eclipse cannon and just threaten to destroy Mobius. This time, he had all seven from the get-go because I led them to him and he used them to successfully break the planet into pieces. It wasn't just me having my adventures anymore after that. At that point, the rest of the world had decided that these emeralds were a complication to world peace. It was then that everyone started to realise, including me, how much of a risk the emeralds really were."

"That's why we keep them separated," Tails added. "If one person has them all, they can be stolen so much more easily. Or that one person can think they have the choice to change the world in ways no single person should have the power to. There's just no reason why it isn't better that they remain separated, nor is there a reason to make our knowledge of where the last two are necessary or beneficial to anyone."

They had made convincing arguments. For a short while, Blaze had said nothing and averted her gaze from both Sonic and Tails. She stepped out the trophy room and into the cool night air and saw as fireflies began their ascent into the sky and around the leaves of the tree. Sonic and Tails followed shortly after her. "I'll not pry on your emeralds any longer. I understand what you're trying to say."

Neither Sonic nor Tails had anything left to say on the matter. They had done enough talking for one day, they thought, and decided that they'd give Blaze the full night's rest before either of them starting asking her hard questions. What could she remember? Why was she in their world? How did she get to their world in the first place? It would all be answered on the morrow, they decided. Tails had shown her over to where she'd be staying, a small room with a bed large enough to accommodate a full sized adult human rather than a Mobian. If Blaze had any things to unpack, she might've done so but instead she just kicked off her shoes and climbed right onto the bed, not even crawling under the sheets. She lay on the bed the way a non-Mobian cat would and let out a slight purring sound as she got comfortable. Tails thought he'd have the time to tell her the morning routine and how the shower times worked but she was already out as soon as she touched the bed. The fox wished her sweet dreams quietly from the door and left for his room, wondering exactly what it was a semi-amnesiac cat from another dimension would dream about.


	4. Prologue IV

**A recent change has been made to the titles of the three preceding chapters. Instead of being called _The Blue Blur_ , the titles have been changed to _Prologue_ to give a better impression to new readers of the content of the chapters as these first four serve the main purpose of establishing what will be happening in the story ahead - and were originally planned to be released all at once as one 9500 word chapter before they were uploaded onto the site.**

 **This is the four entry will be the final chapter in this story's prologue.**

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The beeping had woken Tails up. It was not the beeping of a morning alarm as he didn't own one. Waking up in the morning on time was easy for Mobians as their more woodland accustomed anatomies required them to be up and active at the crack of dawn. But it was still hours before the crack of dawn when the beeping had woken the fox from his sleep. It was of a pitch high enough for his fox ears to distinctly hear better than Sonic would and it came from his round tablet that lay next to his bed. _Beep, beep. Beep, beep._ That was it, four beeps to wake him. "Okay Miles, get up," Tails said to himself, urging his body out of bed. He rubbed his tired eyes for a few long seconds in a strangely comfortable way – he could never understand why rubbing eyes always felt pleasing – before looking down at his tablet. "Oh man, left the lab door open." He thought he could just fall asleep again and ignore the small inconvenience but that would be irresponsible. _Would it though?_ Tails thought, _I mean there's no one in the vicinity of our hide-out for miles. Who would try to rob us?_ It would be best for him to make a habit of double checking things. _It's unnecessary. No need to be prudent about everything. I think I deserve a night's rest._ Deserve it or not, the best thing to do would be to check the alarm. _I really don't think it's necessary though._ Check the bloody alarm, Tails. _Alright!_

After finally pulling himself out of bed, the fox slipped on his red and white sneakers and stepped out into the hallway. He could feel both his tails dragging behind him on the floor the way they usually did when he was tired in comparison to their usual constant movement. It was like as soon as he was tired enough, his tails would take up a mind of their own and choose to sleep against his will. _Well if I can't sleep at least they get to,_ he thought. It was only when he passed by Blaze's guest room that the fox started to properly stir into awareness. _That's weird,_ he thought, _I seem to recall closing Blaze's door when I left her._ He peered through the crack of the door into the dark room and saw the fully dressed bed. No cat lay atop it however. _She might be in the bathroom, I guess._ But he knew better. Her shoes weren't by the bedside as they were before and Tails thought it very unlikely that she would slip on a pair of heels just to go to the bathroom. _Miles, stop it. Don't even let the thought cross your mind. I'm sure Blaze is just out on a walk and isn't the one sneaking into my lab_ , he told himself as he moved for the ramps and stairs at a quicker pace.

The stairs led to a deck that wrapped around the trunk of the massive tree, along which was an imposing metal door that Tails remembered took long to install into the tree. The door had required biometric identification to get in, along with an eight digit code of numbers and letters, voice confirmation, and his mother's maiden name. But standing there that night, he discovered that melting one's way through the door was also an option. _And this damned phone only gave me four beeps,_ Tails said, hopping through the whole in the metal door. His tails were wide awake now, stirring and turning in the air behind him. He was anxious. The room's lights were all on leaving the entire lab well-lit but he was still concerned. He took each step slowly, not sure if she was still in the lab or not. _Stop it, Miles. Don't say she. You don't know that it's her just yet,_ he said, clearly in denial. He walked passed most of his gadgets without even paying them any mind. They were all replaceable even if they were stolen. But there was one thing in his whole lab that he couldn't replace if it went missing. Turning into the vacuum sealed chamber room (or at least it would be vacuum sealed if the door had been left closed) Tails came to see a large circular room mostly empty with nothing but a metallic alter in the middle. There he was supposed to see a dark blue chaos emerald floating and emanating with strange light. Instead, he saw the emerald not in the alter but in the hands of a lavender furred cat who stood there still for a moment, staring into the emerald's beauty. _Damn._

Tails wanted curse aloud when he could see her eyes in the reflection of the emerald from the distance he was at. If he could see her eyes in the reflection, it meant she could see him. Her head darted in his direction and there was a split second of eye-contact. In moments like these, normal people would always have a moment of hesitation, a brief mental glitch moment where their minds would have to process the new information and make a plan. For Blaze, this moment would be significantly shorter than with most people as before Tails could even think to dive for the main alarm, the air was cracking behind her and a violet blur flew by Tails' eyes before he could even react, a gust of wind following after her. "WE HAVE A BREACH!" Tails called as smashed his fist into the panic button on the wall of the lab.

It might have been wiser for Blaze to use her dash to take Tails to the ground instead of fleeing as in a second's time, the alarm siren was going off throughout the whole tree house, and in a few more seconds' time, she could hear a faster set of footsteps than what she expected Tails was capable of. _Okay, Sonic the hedgehog,_ Blaze thought to herself, _let's see how fast you really —_ she would have finished the thought if the blue hedgehog hadn't immediately collided with her as she darted down the stairs, knocking her off the balcony of the tree house and sent her falling down several feet until crashing into the grass below in a loud thud. _My fault for running that fast in a tree house._ She noticed the chaos emerald had landed a few feet ahead of her and immediately scurried to pick it up. _Can't let you slip away,_ she thought, _not after all this trouble._

"Blaze!" she heard Sonic's voice call from the deck above. As the hedgehog jumped from the tree house's salon far upstairs, she turned in the direction of the nearest horizon and began her sprint. She heard him call something else out as she began on her way but she was already too far and had too much wind filling her ears to hear what he had said for certain. Her shoes tapped against the ground at an ever increasing tempo as she built her speed up, dashing across the dark green fields of the countryside. It was still dark, maybe around 3am, and she was running west, away from the sunrise. Once she was at full speed, she'd be able to outrun the rising of the sun behind her and stay in the darkness of night for the next few hours. It would be easier to disappear that way. "Blaze!" she heard Sonic's voice again, more audible than it had been before. She turned her head slightly, not far enough that she'd peer over her shoulder as such was never a good idea when running at the speed she was used to, but enough to hear the sound of a sonic boom and see a blue blur racing towards her in her periphery. She quick-stepped to the right and Sonic went speeding past her, both of them now grinding their heels into the dirt to halt their pace. By the time they both came to rest, there was several yards between them. "Okay, we were trying to be all nice and hospitable earlier avoiding all the obvious questions that anyone in their right mind would have asked by now but I think it's time we were honest with one another."

"Sonic, I'm sorry about what I've had to put you through here but we can't talk right now. I need to leave," Blaze insisted, squeezing the blue emerald tightly in her hand.

"I might be willing to let you leave if you just leave our emerald behind."

"I can't do that."

"Okay then," Sonic said, losing some of his casualness for a moment and becoming quite visibly annoyed. "Then maybe you could let me know what the hell you came her for in the first place. Was it just to take the emerald and leave?"

"I didn't expect to arrive here, Sonic. I didn't expect to find you."

"So you do remember me?"

"I know who you are, yes, but I have no memory of…" she stopped herself, biting her lip to keep the words at bay. "This is bigger than you, Sonic. What's going on here is a matter too large for you to comprehend. I need you to just trust me, okay?"

"After everything I told you yesterday about how the emeralds weren't to be messed with, you just up and decide to steal mine," said Sonic, "and then you ask me to trust you? That's not how this works, Blaze. Now I need you to just hand the emerald back to me and we can-"

"I need these emeralds far more than you do!" She had shouted quite coldly.

"Emeralds? Not just the one?" Sonic said quietly. _Dammit,_ he thought, _she wants all seven of them._ "In that case, I definitely can't let you have them."

"Then I suspect we are enemies in this matter."

"We don't have to be—" but before Sonic could finish, she was dashing past him at a high speed and flying off again into the distance. He was quick to react and was soon making close pursuit. He remembered from when they first met that she was just as fast as him. Knuckles, Tails, and even Amy, another hedgehog, had always been immensely slower than he was but she was always on par with him, rivalling his speed to the digit. She had not lost that in her. Now she was several yards ahead and accelerating at the same rate as him. And as they dashed further and further, Sonic began to think they'd be this close for hours before one of them eventually ran out of energy.

But the two weren't exactly equal. Soon, as Blaze's speed increased, Sonic noticed that with each footprint she left on the ground, there was a small burning fire left behind. The soles of her feet were burning into the ground and smoke and flame were their remnants. No matter how fast Sonic could run, he couldn't burn the ground the way she did. _Oh hell,_ Sonic remembered, _she has pyrokinesis._ The two of them were still locked in, neck in neck, speedily approaching Mach One, and as they did Sonic feared how her pyrokinesis would change in the wake of a sonic boom. The wind rippled behind them as they raced each other, curving up and into Sonic's aerodynamic quills and outshot arms. And though Blaze lacked the same design as him, she still flew with the same speed. The sound rushed out of both of their ears and all they could hear was wind.

Then, synchronously, the sound of two sonic booms blasted through the night air. Sonic's thundered behind him and he couldn't feel his feet anymore, just the wind blasting off his face. Blaze's was more destructive. Fire radiated from her body and blasted outward like an explosion and Sonic, who still chased just behind her, felt the air get increasingly hot. For a moment, the fire was blinding. In the next moment, Sonic was tumbling, tripping, and skidding across the grasslands at Mach One speeds. He rolled his body up to lessen the damage and founds himself grinding into the floor for several hundreds of yards before skidding into a halt as Blaze rocketed away, still flying at the speed of sound. When the hedgehog unrolled his body, he saw a trail of fire leading from his treehouse to Blaze, who now ran off miles ahead. He would have continued the pursuit if the thought of a fire spreading through the grasslands hadn't dissuaded him. And so he took off in the opposite direct, letting the wind he gathered with him extinguish the flames as he darted along.

 _She has our chaos emerald,_ he said to himself as he put out the last of the fire, just as Tails descended from the sky to speak with him. _She has our chaos emerald._

"This is bad," Tails said, half panicked. "She has our chaos emerald!"

"I can see that," Sonic said. _She has our chaos emerald._ "We're just gonna have to get it back." _And she still has six more to go._

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 **The next chapter will be the start of a new four chapter mini-arc. The entire arc is already written however, for the sake of long-term consistency, it will only be published once the story arc following it is finished just for safety. If the third mini-arc is complete by the end of the weekend, the first chapter of the second mini-arc will be released on Monday.**

 **All honest reviews are encouraged.**


	5. Investigation I

**A brief reminder of the release schedule. You will receive two chapters per week until the end of a four chapter mini-arc (so four chapters in two weeks) followed by a week without releases. The next eight chapters have already been written. Remember, all reviews are appreciated.**

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"What was her name?" the interrogator asked, his voice growing with impatience.

"I don't know," Tails lied, his voice growing with irritation. _They're in my house,_ he thought, _I don't like having GUN agents in my house._

"This will go a lot quicker if you co-operate with us, Mr Prower," the interrogator insisted. He was a human, naturally, and so he stood nearly double the height of Tails, something the fox wasn't too happy about either. It's why Tails preferred to sit on the counter as he did, just to equate their height a bit more.

"I am co-operating," he said. "I don't know what else to call allowing a small army of GUN agents to storm my house and invade my privacy." It especially peeved Tails that they were going through his lab. He was almost certain that someone would eventually take something valuable of his and write it off as evidence before he'd eventually hear about some new tech that GUN supposedly developed all by themselves. It peeved him off even further when he saw agents walking through the salon with boxes. _What do they even plan on taking?_

"We've been talking for ten minutes and all you've indicated is that a female cat was in your home and that she has something to do with yesterday's comet," the agent said, putting down his writing pad and leaning in close to Tails, likely in an attempt to intimidate. "I'm beginning to grow impatient with your childish reluctance."

"Childish? In a fox's lifespan, I'm actually quite mature."

"What reason do you have to defend this cat, Mr Prower? If she really did steal your chaos emerald, I'm sure that your co-operation with us would lead to it being retrieved much sooner than with your reluctance now." In all honesty, Tails didn't know why he was defending Blaze. He didn't trust her. Then again, he knew he didn't trust GUN either. His distrust of the agency and all their secrets was well founded but when it came to Blaze, he didn't know why she did what she did, what her overall intentions were, or really anything about her to make his distrust a spiteful one. He still did think that she was just confused about what was going on. But he wasn't going to tell the agent that.

"I'm sure you could retrieve the emerald with my help," Tails said, "and take it right back into your headquarters with the justification that Sonic and I can't take care of it ourselves."

"Well if you could take care of it yourselves," the agent began, "we wouldn't have a problem here, would we?"

Before Tails could think of a snappy comeback, the GUN Commander, Abraham Tower, walked into the bar and Tails' expression died down. The interrogator turned to note the arrival of the commander and stepped back to let him speak with the fox. Tower was not the type Tails would want to mess with as he had a much more imposing figure. He was one of the taller humans Tails had ever seen, maybe even the same height as Robotnik, with a V shaped body and a military attire decorated with medals, badges, and honours. He had dark skin and hair gone white from the decades of responsibility. His eyes were mismatched, one brown and the other green, which, coupled with his permanent cold and stern expression, made looking him in the eye a mission of bravery. He was probably the scariest man the fox had ever met.

"Miles 'Tails' Prower," the commander greeted. "My men are not here to entertain your indiscipline nor are they here to do you damned house cleaning for you. They're here with a job to do, to learn everything they can on the object that crashed in the nearby forest and to learn what this cat friend of yours has to do with it." He spoke forwardly and lacked any courtesy or diplomacy. And his voice was, as always, grim.

"Well before I speak with you, I think I'd like to speak with my lawyer," Tails said, knowing quite well that that was not how this worked.

"That's now how this works," the commander confirmed. "The way this works is that I ask a question and you answer with the whole truth. Otherwise we'll have a problem."

Tails did what he could to stand his ground. "I'm not answering anymore of your questions until Sonic gets back. You can ask how many times you'd like but…" Tails' voice trailed off as the aforementioned hedgehog came skidding into the lounge, causing several agents to jump back and out the way of barrelling blue blur. Sonic had just been showing some of the forensic team to the crash site and made it back to the tree house at a faster speed than they had previously anticipated. Tails' was somewhat relieved when Sonic had returned. He was certain he'd be a bit more confident now that he was around.

"Sorry I took so long," Sonic said, tapping his right foot to the ground three times. He seemed a bit on edge. "Anything I can help you with, Commander Tower?"

"Your fox friend refuses to divulge pertinent information on the matter of the cat you previously mentioned," Tower said, his back now to Tails as he focused on Sonic.

Tails and Sonic shared a brief look. Sonic did not look to be impressed. "Her name is Blaze the cat," he said, much to the surprise of Tails, "and she's just about my height with purple fur and yellow eyes. She's not a Mobian."

"Then what is she."

"I don't know but she's from a different world, a different dimension actually."

"How are you sure of this?"

"I met her before, twice. The second time was during the Soleanna Incident."

"What's the Soleanna Incident?"

"Shadow didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Then it doesn't matter." Abraham Tower didn't seem to like that there was something that Sonic and Shadow knew that he didn't, but he was still glad that at least Sonic had been co-operating more than Tails. Tails, by the way, sat back astonished by how much Sonic was willing to divulge. "She has pyrokinesis. I expect you know what that means?"

"She can control and manipulate fire."

"Exactly, and the icing on the cake is that she's just as fast as me."

"Hmm," Tower wasn't pleased to hear this either. It was no secret that many of the humans weren't too happy about the resurgence of Mobians in the northern nations. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, the Chaotix, Vanilla and Cream, and so many others had found their way into human societies and though common civilians didn't mind – especially because the Mobians were most often the ones to protect them from Dr Robotnik and his threats – the governments and agencies of the world tended to see them as complications, creatures out of their jurisdiction. Sonic and Shadow had always been the most controversial figures because of how fast they were. Now there was another one just as quick as them, a cat who seemed hell bent on collecting the chaos emeralds. He was understandably concerned. "You believe she fell from the sky in that comet, yes?"

"I'm certain of it," Sonic answered. "She was probably sent her from her dimension to collect the chaos emeralds."

"And do you know what she needs them for?"

Sonic shrugged. "Beats me. But if I were to guess, I'd think she needs the emeralds for something going on in her world that her sol emeralds aren't enough to solve, or, maybe she doesn't have access to her sol emeralds."

"And what exactly are the sol emeralds?"

"Tails and I assume they're just the chaos emeralds from her world," Sonic said. The commander had heard enough. Sonic had co-operated.

"Much obliged," Tower said before walking off.

"Wait," Sonic called out to him. "What do you plan on doing about the situation?"

"Whatever's necessary."

"Nice and specific," Sonic jested. "But seriously though, I'd like to know if what I just told you may or may not lead to a friend of mine getting killed."

Tower turned one last time to face Sonic to make his last point. "Quite frankly, Sonic, I don't give a damn about whether a not she's a friend or enemy of yours," he said coldly. "Your relationship with a brigand shouldn't have any sway on a matter this big. If she's trying to steal the chaos emeralds then the priority of GUN is to prevent her from obtaining any more than she has by any means necessary. By any means necessary. If she poses a threat or resists, then we will respond appropriately." And with that said, Abraham Tower turned off once again and left the room.

It wouldn't take too long for all the GUN agents to finish doing their work. It was around 7am when they arrived and they had fully collected all the necessary samples of cat fur, examined the evidence, confiscated the necessary items, snapped the necessary photos, and obtained all the debris from the crash by 10am. They were quite efficient in how they worked, even if they didn't care much for the privacy of the two Mobians. When they had gone, Tails had finally gone up to speak with Sonic.

"So," the fox began as they watched the choppers and planes take off into the distance, "you were a lot more truthful than I thought you'd be. Since when do we supply information to 'the man'?"

"Since Blaze chose to steal one of the seven most powerful gems on the planet," Sonic said. "Look, I'm not happy about giving GUN all of her details either but they're more likely to find Blaze than we are with all their resources."

"Does that mean she's in their hands now?"

"Nope," Sonic said, pushing himself off the balcony and facing his fox friend. "I have no doubt that Tower and his goons only care about getting back the emerald. You heard all that 'by any means necessary' stuff. He's not gonna let her off alive. We just need to make sure we can find her before they do. If we can then we might stand a chance of finding out exactly why she's doing all this. If not and GUN finds her… well, at least the emeralds will be safe."

Tails could see Sonic didn't like the thought of it. Tails didn't like the thought either although he didn't know why. He didn't know Blaze like Sonic did and the only experience he had with her was watching her steal his emerald and take to the hills. Maybe it was because she was a Mobian like them… even if she technically wasn't from their world but she was a large anthropomorphic animal. Tails wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and hope she'd do well by it. "Well, I guess it's settled," Tails said. "We've got a cat to catch."

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 **More to come on Friday.**


	6. Investigation II

**It is often disputed by the Sonic fans whether or not the stages City Escape and Radical Highway are set in Station Square. In this story, all the city stages in both _Sonic Adventure_ games will be treated as though they are in the same city, that being Station Square, one of the many cities in the United Federation including Empire City, Westopolis, and what remains of Central City. **

**Remember, all reviews are appreciated.**

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Sonic and Tails had left their home on the Tornado 2, Tails' blue plane that he made after getting tired of crashing and rebuilding his first one. They flew off high into the clear blue of the sky and watched as their massive treehouse fort shrunk away into the green of the fields and became virtually invisible. This was always how their adventures would start, Tails sitting in the pilot seat of his plane and Sonic standing on the right wing for some reason in the direction of wherever the setting of their new journey would begin. Sonic would relish standing on the wing of that plane and feeling the wind blast into his face as they zoomed through the air. Technically it was a sensation he felt all the time with running anyway but whenever he stood on the plane it meant they were going somewhere together and likely because they had a mission. A new adventure was ahead of them. _Although it would be nice if we weren't hunting down an old friend,_ Sonic thought. It was true that the thought of Blaze's running off with the chaos emerald did sour his mood a little bit but he didn't see it as them going out to defeat or capture an enemy but as the two of them going out to find and help a friend.

They knew that finding her would be one of their more difficult missions. If she moved as slowly as Tails then she might still be somewhere near enough for Sonic to just sprint all over the ground and search for clues… in fact if she moved as slowly as Tails then they wouldn't have lost her in the first place. But instead she was essentially an interdimensional counterpart to Sonic himself. She was the violet blur to his blue blur, the fastest thing alive of the sol dimension. She might not even be in the United Federation anymore, they considered. So looking for her the old fashioned was not going to work. Instead, they had decided to visit someone who they expected Blaze might visit during her time in their world, someone who she had been familiar with the first time she was there.

"Cream the rabbit is friends with Blaze the cat?" Tails said as they flew in the direction of Station Square.

"Yup, Cream was helping Blaze find all the sol emeralds she lost while she was in our world way back when," Sonic explained. "They were actually really close."

"Cream the flying rabbit," Tails added, "the rabbit who flies with her ears."

"Yes, Tails, unless you don't remember meeting her too."

"No, that's not it," Tails said. "It's just we have two pairs or really fast Mobians with their own respective magic emeralds and younger companions who know how to fly despite belonging to species that don't typically do so at play here. Seems you and Blaze have a lot in common."

"Yeah, I guess we do," Sonic chuckled. "I never did ask Cream if she had any memory of Blaze after what happened in Soleanna actually. I guess it's because Cream and I never just talk."

"Well she isn't quite as much of an adventurer as we are," said Tails. "In fact I haven't heard much of her doing anything recently. Although it may just be because she seven years old."

"Isn't she six?"

"She's seven."

"I'm pretty sure she's six, Tails."

"Her birthday was two months ago, Sonic."

"It was?" Sonic shook his head. "Man, I guess we should really start paying more attention to some of our other friends." It was true that Sonic and Tails wouldn't see Cream that often but it was never like they kept constant contact with all their other friends either. It was often that Sonic and Tails would just be out adventuring and bump into someone like Amy Rose by accident and have her tag along on their exploits. Such would never occur with the young rabbit. Perhaps she was always in Station Square. Or maybe she was living a normal life in the city and actually going to school unlike the rest of them. Technically most of Sonic's friends were still of high-school age anyways so doing the same wouldn't be a bad idea for the rest of them either.

It was late in the evening when the Tornado 2 came by Station Square. The city was massive and always expanding and when they descended from the clouds around sunset to see the countless skyscrapers reaching upwards, they noticed how much larger it had actually gotten. The city was always evolving like that and they had flown over quite a large portion of it before they eventually came by areas that they found familiar. As they descended, they spotted Casinopolis – one of the few really grand casinos that wasn't owned by Robotnik for once – and the familiar theatre and diner in the near vicinity, places that the two used to visit regularly during their time in the city. They came by the speed highway network that connected the different districts of the city all together – the highway was notorious for going high up into the air and running between buildings, a design to minimize the traffic on the ground. And of course there was Twinkle Park, where Sonic took Amy on a date once. Sure, he didn't call it a date but Tails always used to tease him about it saying that his expedition to Twinkle Park with Amy was a massive step forward in their relationship. The city was much larger than just this area however and it even extended to numerous semi-urban looking flats arranged on sloping hills. Sonic's most fond memories in that sector of the city was being chased by a massive GUN truck back when he had been mistaken with Shadow. It was around then when he stopped visiting Station Square as regularly. His reputation had been somewhat tarnished that day as he lead that truck through countless buildings and bridges and cars and cause quite a lot of collateral damage. _I don't know why they were so mad though,_ Sonic thought, _it's not like I didn't save the city twice._ Cream lived in this semi-urban area however landing a plane there, no matter how small it was, would be a problem and it would likely attract the local authorities to them once again so they tried to find a spot in the city where they would get the least flack.

"The Emerald Coast Hotel," Sonic said as they parked their plane in the garage of the dubbed hotel. "They said I could stay here for free after I saved the city from Chaos that one time. Never thought I'd actually come back though."

"Well we'll probably only just spend the night," Tails said. "As soon as we hear from Cream, we need to start making plans about where we can find Blaze next."

Even though Station Square had the highest number of Mobians living in it in comparison to the rest of the cities of the north – less than ten but still more than most others – seeing Sonic in the streets was a great excitement for many of the people there. Back when they were sorting out the Chaos situation, no one in the north knew Sonic and just thought he was another Mobian running around and catching the train like everyone else. Then he saved the city and became a massive celebrity… then a few weeks later, he was labelled a criminal and was hunted by every officer in the country. Then he saved the whole world and was made into a celebrity again and since then, he'd been travelling all over the world letting his fame spread more and more. He was the hedgehog who fought on the front lines against the Black Arms. He was the hedgehog who came second in the Ex World Grand Prix. He was the hedgehog who fixed all the continents of the world after they were split apart. Now here he was, back in the city that made him famous.

Sonic and Tails were fast movers on their feet but they went through the city quite slowly because of how often they were stopped by fans who wanted to take hundreds of photos with the blue blur. None of them knew or recognised Tails however which the fox didn't mind – even though he did save the city himself and was rewarded their very chaos emerald for it. He was never the limelight type of person. Sonic enjoyed being the centre of attention for a while but it would eventually annoy him over time as well. And being surrounded by so many humans – all of whom stood much taller than him – made him remember why he enjoyed nature and the countryside more than big cities. Still, it was nice to see Station Square again.

Hundreds of autographs and photos later, the hedgehog and the fox came by Cream's building on a street packed shoulder to shoulder with apartment buildings arranged in blocks, in the centre of which were little areas of greenery that resembled small parks. The city planner must have been a genius. "This is the place," Tails said as they entered the front door and began up the stairs.

"998C Platform Street," Sonic repeated to himself, "turns out phonebooks are still useful." They passed by the floor of 998A and B before they came by the hallway that led to Cream and Vanilla's home. Sonic knocked on the door.

"You think maybe we should have called before just showing up?" Tails asked.

"Nah, I don't think it'd be necessary. Cream knows us. We're friends! Even if we do forget each other's birthdays."

"She came to your birthday, Sonic."

"Okay, maybe I'm not as in touch with her life as I should be but it all starts now," Sonic insisted. "No need to call ahead with friends, right?"

The door unlocked and opened to reveal Cream's mother, a rabbit in her early twenties with the same cream coloured fur as her daughter but with a tuft of orange between her ears and dressed in a long pink and purple dress. She was almost the size of a short human in fact due to her age. Sonic and Tails could tell that she was used to answering the door to humans as her first instinct was to look up as she opened the door but when her eyes met no one, she turned down to see the blue hedgehog and yellow fox standing in the hallway, smiling friendly smiles to her. She looked at them for half a second… before slamming the door shut in their faces.

There was a momentary silence. "Huh," uttered Tails, "seems Vanilla isn't too happy to see us."

"Seems so," Sonic said before knocking at the door again, this time a bit harder and more deliberate. "Vanilla, it's Sonic and Tails."

"I can see that," she said in a worried voice through the door. "Oh dearie, I'm sure I must seem quite rude to have done what I did but I'm afraid I can't let the two of in at the moment." Leave it to Cream's mom to slam a door in your face and then apologise about it afterwards.

"We're just here to see your daughter, Vanilla. We swear we won't be long," Sonic said. "If you could just open—"

"I'm dreadfully sorry, Mr Sonic," she said, making Sonic remember where Cream learned her courtesies from, "but I can't in good conscience let you in."

"Well, why not?"

The door opened by just a crack and the womanly rabbit peeped an eye at the two. "With no intention to offend, I do believe the two of you are a bad influence on my daughter."

The statement caught the two of them off guard. It was something they had never been told before, that they were bad examples to anyone's children, especially considering that Cream had been going on her own adventures with Amy since she was five years old. "How could Sonic and I be bad influences?" Tails asked. "We're adventurers and heroes. All we ever do is help people."

"Yes, I'm sure the two of you are a great help to the rest of the world but I'm afraid my daughter is in a very impressionable phase at this point in her life," Vanilla explained, "and having Cream spend time with former freedom fighters and daredevils is not quite what I have in mind for good role models. Now if you'll excuse me, I have dinner on the stove."

Before Sonic or Tails could say anything to convince her against her newfound distrust of the two, the door was closed again and locked it leaving them alone in the hallway. It was an unexpected turn of events to say the least. "I guess that's that," Tails said.

"Nah," Sonic said, "we didn't fly all the way from our place to Station Square just to get left out in the hallway. Come on."

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 **Chapter Seven and Eight will be out next week after which there will be a week's beak before the next mini-arc begins.**

 **All reviews are appreciated.**


	7. Investigation III

**There has been an update to the scheduled releases. Instead of releasing two chapters per week until the end of a four chapter mini-arc followed by a week's break and another two chapter week, the usual one chapter per week rule will be used instead - at least in the case of the chapters that are substantial enough to stand on their own. Chapter Eight will be the last chapter released in the same week as its preceding chapter and will be out by the end of the week.**

 **Reviews are appreciated more than favourites and follows.**

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Some people saw chao as pets. They were minute and round like fat little fairies with butterfly wings and adorable childlike eyes. But for Cream the rabbit, chao were more like children that one would have to raise. They had to be fed and cared for, taught to communicate and sing and draw and dance, played with every day, and they could not be left alone for too long unless one wished to find their home in a complete mess. And once they knew how to fly, it was like a toddler learning how to walk: one could never be sure what they could get up to then. Because of her chao, Cheese and Chocola, one blue and the other brown, she had become quite the reliable and responsible rabbit and picked up many motherly characteristics at her tender age of seven. Though Vanilla would make dinner for her, Cream, and the two chao each night, it would be up to Cream to give her chao two other meals a day. She would tuck them into bed at night and read them stories. She would keep them from getting into fights. She would dress them appropriately for whenever they were going to a fancy function – which usually just meant putting bowties around their necks. She had made herself quite responsible solely by caring for two little chao. And sometimes, Vanilla would forget how mature her daughter could really be.

"Chao, chao, chao!" called Cheese the chao – chao typically only know how to communicate with the one word.

"I'll be with you just now, Cheese," Cream promised. "I just need to help mommy with dinner, okay?" Cream had been floating in the air by the flapping of her massive and heavy ears trying to reach to top shelf so she could pass some ingredients to her mother. It was a known fact that Cream had larger ears than most Mobians, including the other rabbits. They acted like wings and allowed her to fly so long as she kept them flapping. "Are you sure we have lavender spice up here, mommy? I can't see it."

Vanilla returned to the kitchen and tied the apron around her waist again. "It has to be up there, sweetie. Do you want me to go check?"

"Yes please," Cream said politely. "All the missing things do show up whenever you look for them." Vanilla pulled up a small stool and stepped up onto it to try and reach the top as Cream descended back to the floor and let her ears fall to rest. "Mommy, who was at the door?"

"No one, sweetie. Just two lost teenagers looking for directions," her mother lied. It wasn't a very convincing lie and it didn't take long for Cream to see an obvious irregularity.

"In the third storey of an apartment building?" Cream asked. "They must have been _really_ lost."

"Chao, chao, choa!" Cheese called out again, more impatient than he had been before.

"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, Cheese," she called into the next room. She couldn't see exactly what it was Cheese had been shouting about but she imagined it was just a ploy to get her attention so she could see what he had finger-painted… in fact, chao didn't have fingers so it was really just normal painting.

"Here's the lavender," Vanilla said, stepping down from the stool and placing it next to all the other ingredients, "now I need you to grate the cheese and sprinkle it over the dish, Cream."

"CHAO!?" cried Chocola, the brown chao that sat in the corner of the kitchen turning the pages of a book, alarmed by what Vanilla had said.

"Cheese as in the food, Chocola, not your brother," Cream clarified. It was the only problem with living in a household where everyone was named after a food item; dinner time would always be a confusing situation. In fact, Cream even had an aunt named Lavender but that is not important here. "If they were lost teenagers, why did you close the door on them like that, mommy?"

"Because," Vanilla began, thinking long on it before finally finishing, "they were being rude. They didn't say please or thank you."

"So you slammed the door on them?" Cream was surprised by her mother's newfound malice towards teenagers and evidently so was Cheese in the next room as he continued to chant. In fact, Cheese may have still just been concerned with whatever had been bothering him before. "I thought you said it was always good to help people in need, even if they don't say please or thank you."

"I did but…" Vanilla began before Cheese's chanting grew excessively loud. She saw this as an opportunity to divert the subject. "Oh Cream, would you mind checking on Cheese? I'll grate the… dairy product for you."

Cream curtsied kindly and skipped off into the dining to see what the fuss was about. There she found Cheese sitting in a baby-chair with his painting in front of him, a painting that was not even finished. Instead, the chao spent all its energy pointing at the window and trying to get Cream's attention. And through the window, a window that lead to the steal staircase that ran outside every building, Cream saw Sonic the hedgehog and Miles Prower peering through, trying to hush the chao. When she made eye-contact with them, she didn't know how to react. She was tempted to go for her usual courteous greeting but they certainly didn't look like they were supposed to be there. Instead, Cream walked up to the window and opened it, allowing Sonic and Tails to sneak in quietly, taking care not to make a sound loud enough to alert Vanilla – although one of Tails' tails did knock over an hourglass onto the carpet floor and Cheese kept chao-ing at the two.

"Hello, Mr Sonic and Mr Tails," Cream finally greeted in a flowery voice, high in pitch but low in volume. "May I ask why you're trying to get in through the window?"

"We tried the front door but your mom wasn't making it easy," Sonic said, his eyes constantly darting to Cheese whose chanting made him worry a little. "Do you think you could calm your chao for a second? Vanilla can't know we're here."

"CHEESE!" Cream shouted in a somewhat cute sounding motherly voice, stern enough to make the once boisterous chao suddenly quieten and sit still. "Mommy said that there were two teenagers at the door asking for directions. Why would she say that?"

"Supposedly we may or may not be a bad influence on you, I don't know, but regardless we're here and need to ask you some…" Sonic voice trailed off when he noticed Vanilla walk into the dining room holding Chocola and his book in her arms. She looked up and saw the two interlopers and her daughter and froze. _It's a good thing I don't play stealth,_ Sonic thought just as Vanilla tossed Chocola into the air – who promptly started flying – began chasing Sonic and Tails about the apartment with a broom she grabbed lying against the wall, trying her best to get them out.

"How dare you break into my home!?" the furious rabbit said, swinging at Tails who also took to the air while the two chao began chanting once again and filling the room with chaos.

"Technically it's not breaking in because Cream let us—" he was interrupted by the broom slamming across his face and knocking him onto the floor. Sonic, using his indoor speed, quickly darted to grab his fox friend and moved into the living room, tripping over all the toys scattered over the floor.

"Vanilla, I think you're being a bit too defensive!" Sonic said as she chased after them. "We just need to ask Cream a few questions."

"I WILL NOT HAVE YOU DRAG MY DAUGHTER ON ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR DANGEROUS ADVENTURES!" she shouted before swinging at them again with Chocola and Cheese in the back cheering her on.

Vanilla was halfway through her backswing when he daughter Cream dropped between her and the dynamic duo, causing Vanilla to halt her assault. "Mommy please," Cream insisted, "Sonic and Tails are my friends! I want to hear what they have to say." There was no stopping it now, Vanilla realised, and she lowered her broom and let Cream speak with the two adventurers. "What did you want to ask?"

Sonic regained his composure and pushed back the quills on his head which had momentarily stood on edge. "I should have asked you this a long time ago," he began, "but it only became relevant very recently. What do you remember of Blaze the cat?"

From what Sonic recalled, Vanilla had met with Blaze as well but he needed to ask Cream as the two of them had been quite close during Blaze's time on Mobius. Cream was her escort, her guide through the new world, her only companion as even Sonic had been an obstacle in her way the first time. "Who?"

"Blaze the cat," Sonic repeated, almost immediately aware that Cream had no memory of Blaze's first appearance either. "She has violet fur and dresses in this purple coat. She has pyrokinesis and runs just as fast as me. The two of you were friends. Don't you remember her?"

Cream had a blank expression. "I don't know who you're talking about, Mr Sonic."

"Are you sure, Cream?" he persisted. "If you think really hard I'm sure you can remember. You knew her before the Soleanna Incident. You knew her before the whole world was at risk. You cried when she left and I told you that she'd be back eventually. Well she's back now and I think that if she has any memory of you, she might come to visit. Now, are you sure you don't remember her?"

Cream tried to think hard on it and it was visibly clear that she did so but Vanilla interrupted their conversation. "What do you mean she might come to visit?" the older rabbit questioned. "Is this 'Blaze' character dangerous?"

"No," Tails said, "she wouldn't do anything to bring you or your daughter harm, Vanilla." Tails turned to Sonic. "I think we need to go."

"This is why I don't want the two of you spending time with Cream," Vanilla began again. "It starts off with some harmless adventuring until those emeralds get involved and the whole world starts shaking and interdimensional cats start showing up looking for people and…" she continued to rant but the two had stopped listening after that last one.

"Interdimensional cat, you said," Tails repeated, "We didn't mention that Blaze was from another dimension but you knew." Sonic, Tails, and Cream all perked up at the realisation and the attention was now on Vanilla. "Do you remember her?"

"I don't," Vanilla said, "I'm not sure what little adventure you're getting yourselves into now but I don't have to play any part in it."

"If you know anything about Blaze," Sonic began, "anything at all, you have to tell us, Vanilla. She's our friend. She's yours and Cream's friend too. And she's returned from her world confused and looking for the chaos emeralds for some reason and we need to find her before GUN does because if they find her, they'll kill her, Vanilla. If you know anything, please tell us."

Sonic hadn't intended on mentioning GUN or emeralds but he could tell Vanilla would only budge if she knew how high the stakes really were. "I don't remember who she is," Vanilla finally said, "but I have these fragments of memories. I had seen a violet cat before but I could never put my finger on it, a violet cat with incredible speed who spent a lot of time with my daughter. I didn't know if it was just a recurring dream or anything significant. That's all I know. I don't know why I can't remember your friend but I honestly can't, Sonic."

"And she hasn't tried to contact you in any way recently?" Sonic asked. "If she hasn't then it means she probably doesn't remember you either but—"

"She hasn't," Vanilla confirmed.

Sonic and Tails shared a look and likely read each other's minds. _There's nothing left to ask here_. "Thank you, Vanilla," Tails said, "and we're sorry if our showing up was an inconvenience to you in any way. We'll be going now."

"But one last thing," Sonic said as Tails made his way for the door. "When Blaze returned, she didn't recognise me or Tails at first but then she started talking as though she had met us before. There's a possibility that the more time she spends here, the more she'll remember the last time she was here and all the people she'd met. If so, then there is a chance that she could come looking for you, Cream. And if she does, don't run away from her. Don't make her feel alienated. Don't call the cops on her either. The two of you were friends before all of this and she's currently alone in this world. If you see her, be a friend to her… and call either me or Tails as soon as possible, okay?"

Cream nodded. Vanilla remained quiet. With that sorted, Sonic and Tails made their way for the front door and left the apartment of Cream and Vanilla. In the next few minutes, Vanilla attended to the quiche that now sat burned in the oven and Cream began fixing up the apartment, moving all the toys to where they belonged and fixing the furniture from the little chase that was had in their apartment. Vanilla had scrapped her dinner plans and decided to order pizza delivery. As soon as she was done calling the joint, Cream walked back into the kitchen.

"Mommy," she began, "why didn't you tell me about this Blaze person?"

"Because I didn't remember her fully, Cream," Vanilla said, not looking at her daughter but staring into her burnt quiche. "It was just a figment of an idea in my head, one that's been troubling me for quite some time now but I didn't know what it meant so I kept it to myself."

"That's not smart, mommy," Cream said. "You don't have to keep things like that to yourself. We are all we have. You can tell me about anything that's bothering you, you know that, right?" Vanilla smiled. "And don't think because I'm young that I can't handle the responsibility of knowing someone dangerous. I'm friends with Sonic the hedgehog after all. But if you really don't want me to go running around on adventures with him, I won't. I promise. You, Cheese, and Chocola need me more than he does."

Vanilla's eyes filled with a few tears but she quickly wiped them away before turning back to her daughter. "Thank you, Cream," she said. As her daughter went off skipping back into the dining room to sit with Cheese and Chocola, Vanilla remained in the kitchen thinking of just how responsible her daughter was and how often she'd forget how mature Cream could be.

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 **The last chapter of this mini-arc will be out by the end of this week.**


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